Bio-electrochemical systems (BES)s are a promising technology for many application fields such as renewable energy generation, wastewater treatment, and bioelectrochemical sensing. As a result of the complex nature of BES, a large number of studies need to be done to shrink the gap between lab experiments and industrial applications. A potentiostat with a 3-electrode setup is typically used to study the bio-electrochemical process and monitor the current-potential characteristics of the BES. Since the duration of the BES experiments can last several days or even weeks, the traditional commercial potentiostat with a limited number of channels cannot meet the research needs. Therefore, a custom-designed multi-channel potentiostat with a massive number of stimulation and sensing channels is of great research interest in order to increase the experiment throughput. This thesis studies the design of multi-channel potentiostats for the application of microbial electrochemical experiments. A detailed review of SotA potentiostats shows that existing potentiostats have a limited number of parallel channels or support massive parallel sensing with limited parallel stimulation capabilities and/or cannot run EIS across a sufficiently large frequency range. The CMOS-based multi-channel potentiostats are expected to solve these issues thanks to the ability of CMOS circuits to implement complex systems in a small area with high performance. In this Ph.D. work, the challenges of designing CMOS multi-channel potentiostats are identified, and possible solutions are proposed.
17/10/2023 10:30 - 12:30
Aula van de Tweede Hoofdwet, Thermotechnisch Instituut
